I was looking over some older materials to see what all I might need to trade up Slave and Nemesis for weapons and I saw that Ares-NT is a 14* weapon and Austere-NT is a 15*.

Considering all the weapons in NA are NT, does that mean the Slave/Nemesis hoarding is for naught, or are we going to have 15*s in Episode 4 patch?

That would also mean that the next Ultimate addition would drop 14* Ares weapons, which would automatically overshadow the current Nemesis and Slave, wouldn't it?

I thought this was pretty common knowledge that the current gear was going to be outclassed in the next expansion. That's how most MMOs work.

@Lorient of course, but regarding how the progression through the episodes are supposed to work, we could just end up being way stronger than the available content again.

Not worried about my weapons being obsolete, but if Zig isn't gated even more, jumping to 15*s would be really bad for the flow of the game.

There either going to give us 15* right away or just hold off on 15* and give us 14* to play with for a few months. Mostly likely the later in my guess to slow the progression for people already stacked with multiple +35 slaves and Nem in their storage waiting to get all the 15* they can.

Also the many issue with why players are way stronger than they should is because of how early they gave us slave and Nem weapons. Really all the content right now suppose to be done using the Revolsio weapons. But they jumped the gun and gave Slave and Nem without the content those weapons are scaled too.

@John-Paul-RAGE Ah, ok. I misunderstood what you were getting at. Judging by how willing they've been to change things for balance so far, I'm not too worried.

@John-Paul-RAGE @Lorient Just wait for the forum posts!

I'm all for balance but at the same time, chaos is fun too since long as it's not a ranking mode or PVP, I'd rather we go nuts.

@SleeprunnerInc Not going to lie, part of me wants to be able to run around and one shot literally everything I see. XD

@Lorient We will definately reach that point at some time.

And I bet if you had the perfect fully upgraded weapon atm with the best affixes possible, you could NEAR oneshot most stuff under SH.

@John-Paul-RAGE Nemesis and Slave are part of the upgrade path into Austere (together with Invade and Ares), so they won't be useless, plus I'm also expecting them to remain the strongest weapons until mid Ep4.

There's no way 15 stars weapons will come with Ep4, 14 stars sure, eventually, but definitely not 15 stars. I would expect 15 stars during Ep5.

Equipment releases, I'm expecting something like this to happen going forward:

• The next major urgent quest will introduce Invade weapons and the option to upgrade Ray weapons and units into Union.
• Challenge quests, maybe they'll convert the Ideal series into NT weapons for NA and buff them up to make them compete with Nemesis/Slave?
• Mining Base 4, maybe they'll convert the Orbit series into NT weapons for NA?
• The first Ep4 urgent quest will add the Earth series weapons (like Seikaiser Sword), while they're considerably weaker than Nemesis/Slave, they come with Stat VI augment factors (like Might VI), which makes them very useful for augmenting.
• And Ultimate Amduscia will likely introduce the first 14 star weapons, Ares series.

When it comes to Zieg, I guess at first he'll only have the option to upgrade Ray into Union, Invade units into Austere units, and later on by the end of Ep4, Zeinesis into Qliphad.

It's also possible there could be some exchanges introduced earlier than JP (Ceres -> Ceres Zara or Homura -> Shien/Guren), or even exchanges that don't exist on JP (Nox -> Arion -> Raete, the latter 2 are from PSO2es, they're 13 star recolors of Nox, it would be interesting to have a Nox upgrade path on NA, another one would be Revolsio -> Dominacio).

nemesis weapons are 30-40m eah and you guys are saying like everyone having them like vita weapons. i want the new gears are something not to hard to get on the next update, if not i'll just leech with my unique badge weapons.

@WillfulChart930 said in How do you think they will handle Zig's exchanges in Episode 4?:

nemesis weapons are 30-40m eah and you guys are saying like everyone having them like vita weapons. i want the new gears are something not to hard to get on the next update, if not i'll just leech with my unique badge weapons.

There's a chance that Ray weapons will receive an upgrade path in the next major urgent quest. While the upgraded versions will still be weaker than Namesis/Slave, they should also be easier to get, I guess.

@Ezodagrom Yeah and in the end of it all and grand scheme of things...

It doesn't really matter if you got Nemesis or not.

There will always be an easier to get alternative that will be a bit weaker than Nemesis, Slave etc but will still do the job.

And alot of the damage comes from being able to play the class properly.

A person who dies often with Nemesis will be less useful than someone who rarely dies with a upgraded Nox. (This comparison is made by both actually trying to do DPS and not a case of: One is fighting and one is running away.)

@Ezodagrom yeah, I hopefully they hold off for a while with the Austere, but I spent the last couple weeks feeling internally hyped to trade in for it before randomly realizing a couple days ago that the NT weapon system interferes with the original trade in for Austere, leaving only the 15* version available for us in NA.

There is always a chance they goof and leave it in at the start too, though. We did have Aura during Episode 1 (granted our SH is harder than the original SH).

@John-Paul-RAGE said in How do you think they will handle Zig's exchanges in Episode 4?:

There is always a chance they goof and leave it in at the start too, though. We did have Aura during Episode 1 (granted our SH is harder than the original SH).

Nah, there's no way that Austere 15* will happen anytime soon.

One of their requirements are the 14* Ares series, which aren't available on NA yet. But at least Invade NT should drop from "that" urgent quest.

Though, the 11* Austere units are very likely to happen.

@Ezodagrom I was thinking the last Ultimate would get added in July before the start of episode 4. In the original timeline it was included before the level 80 cap, wasn't it?

I just remember playing in JP and doing nothing but Gix runs in-between PD urgents.